Daylight Chaos

  Book 2, Solar Dawn series

  Eliza Green

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  BOOKS BY ELIZA GREEN

  WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT ELIZA/CONNECT ONLINE

  COPYRIGHT

  1

  TECK

  His gut churned as he thought about his best friend. Moments ago, she’d been captured and dragged in front of Voss for an audience with him. When she’d seen Teck standing inside the door, wearing a pristine-white agent uniform, her face had said it all. A look that said why did you betray me?

  If only she knew.

  He’d almost remained in that room, to keep an eye on her. But that would have broken expected protocol. Teck had gone through too much to get on Voss’s team. To show sympathy toward Kaz would undo that.

  More than he needed her to know the truth, he needed Voss to believe he would do whatever he commanded.

  As soon as Teck stepped out of the room, a young agent, around twenty-five with brown hair and a hardened look, gripped his arm.

  ‘Chancellor Voss has a job for you.’

  Teck almost asked why, but the question remained stuck in his throat.

  Just do as the Chancellor requests.

  The agent marched him down a corridor and into an elevator. It pinged and whirred, descending one level.

  When the doors opened, he was pulled from the steel box into a different building. He looked around, expecting familiarity, expecting it to be the same place Spark had flagged for housing Orion security, and where he had successfully infiltrated once.

  Although the plain-gray interior looked similar, this was not the same place. For a start, the other building had had no elevator.

  The guard led him to a door. Beyond, a narrow flight of stairs leading up.

  He followed the guard up half way, then deviated into a locked room.

  Not Level 4, but also not Five.

  If he had to guess, Teck would say they were between levels, somewhere inside the riser.

  He was shoved into a large, dark and dingy room and told to sit at a terminal.

  A security hub. Bright screens provided the only meaningful illumination, but it battled against the dimness, making his eyes pinch.

  The air in here felt warmer, as if the ventilation didn’t quite reach this far. Like the place—or the people using it—didn’t matter as much.

  ‘Voss says you’re good at tracking things,’ the young agent said, ‘So, track.’

  He looked up at the agent. Too young to be so callous. ‘Track what?’

  The man gave him a long, cool look and left the room.

  Teck heard a small buzzing noise, then saw what was making it.

  A small drone flew over the heads of a dozen workers similar to him.

  His heart skipped a beat. Perhaps this system would give him access to Orion’s mainframe.

  His stomach flipped as he turned his attention to the empty cubicle space that would be his for however long. Just one of many being occupied by a collection of Voss’s greenest loyalists.

  Teck didn’t know this system, but not many used physical hardware anymore to operate. He waved his hand to activate the hologram cube that he guessed must be nearby. A screen appeared before him, flooding his eyes with new light, causing him to squint.

  He wiped away the tears, blinking through the discomfort.

  After a moment, his sight adjusted and he took in the equipment before him.

  New, not like the ancient monitor contraptions in the basement of the old underground station. Systems emitting a dull orange image at best.

  Teck watched as a dozen split screens appeared before him of the various levels in Orion. He took a moment to study them.

  His former neighbors now lived on Zero. The chaotic restructuring of Level 1 had begun, already witnessed by him. The views of the controlled chaos had been split into three, giving Teck a newer view of the place where he had once lived.

  Other screens showed activity on Levels 2 and 3.

  He recalled Freddy in the concourse for the engineering tier on Two. The man’s low-clearance role was to monitor the activity the roving cameras recorded. But this monitoring, cleverly hidden inside a riser, went a step further. It even went so far as to look into some homes.

  What wasn’t covered was the activity on Zero, where former Level-1 residents currently languished without a way out.

  Teck pulled in a steadying breath.

  His reason for being under Voss’s command also occupied the lower levels. Spark. She had given him a job to do.

  First, get caught by Voss.

  Second, agree to help get the Winters’s journals in exchange for seeing his sister Malorie again.

  Third, pretend to be useful.

  The Asian leader of the Doomsayers needed him to become part of Voss’s team for one reason: to manipulate key systems so she and her crew could piggyback off them. But without even checking, he already knew these monitoring systems did not connect to the mainframe.

  Voss would not give him access to anything important.

  Instructions appeared on screen but Teck didn’t need them. He already knew what to do.

  Look for potential weak points in automated defenses, but also report unusual activity. He expected only a report of the latter might win him a gold star.

  How he did his job didn’t matter as much as one thing: Voss was testing him, asking Teck to prove his loyalty.

  He leaned close to the screens that showed the static eyes in the sky, but also what the roving cameras recorded. He already knew they followed predetermined routes. To survive on Level 1, he had needed to know more than the basics.

  Maybe it was a risk, showing this to someone who noticed patterns. But he figured Voss already knew some of his habits.

  The drone in the room swooped in suddenly and came to hover by his side. Teck ignored it, not sure if this was usual treatment for all newbies, or just for him.

  Teck concentrated on the visuals before him. A log box sat to the right of the images, waiting for his report. He spotted a disagreement on Three outside one of the food stands. He reported it, wondering if the visuals he checked matched those the other workers monitored.

  The drone gave up and continued its sweep of the room.

  With it gone, Teck concentrated on his screen. He saw a list of cameras on the right. They were operational but not showing images in the limited number of boxes. Teck clicked on one with the name tag: Level 5.

  His heart stuttered when new images appeared. Among them Kaz, being deposited at a townhouse with mod cons, and likely stuffed with surveillance. The camera he looked through appeared to be fixed on the property.

  With a shaking hand, he checked the other camera feeds, but only two covered Level 5. The first, Kaz’s new home.

  The second, the living room inside the house.

  Voss must have known he would snoop. This visual had been meant for him. The chancellor was testing him to see what he would do.

  He drew in a deep breath, silent, pressure-filled. With the drone busy elsewhere, he released it slowly, leaning in closer to the screen.

  Instead of identifying weaknesses in Orion defenses, he focused on the vulnerabilities of a basic program like this.

  The drone returned to him soon enough. Teck swept away the footage of Kaz before the contraption settled into a position over his left shoulder.

  Was the drone here because these terminals did not link to Voss’s personal network?

  Possibly.

  A network to not only run Orion but manage the Centroid program would require sizable memory and CPU processing power. He considered these terminals were localized for a reason. Freeing up crucial space would boost power to what mattered.

  Teck’s hope lifted. Maybe he could find a way to manipulate this system without being seen. But it couldn’t be a big manipulation. Not with eyes on him.

  No direct hacking attempt here, but being in the security center—no matter how limited—was no loss. It gave him insight into Orion’s response times, command structures, and weaknesses.

  Snippets of written conversations flashed up on his screen.

  A momentary thing, perhaps a glitch. But possibly not. Unlike unsecured messages, encrypted messages were not saved anywhere. They could be using a local drive, maybe passing through some temporary chat room first?

  Teck glanced at his comms device, a chip embe dded into his wrist. He hadn’t tried using it since being captured. But what if he could get an encrypted message to Kaz?

  With the drone otherwise occupied, Teck quickly scanned the open messages. He found a bandwidth they were using to communicate—possibly between others in his security room, or between similar stations.

  In one of the chat threads, he keyed in a code for an encryption chat corridor, built to sync with his comms, then added Kaz’s unique signature. He hoped the encrypted feature he’d installed on her device still worked. Chances were, her ability to send messages out had been blocked, meaning anything he sent would be strictly one-way.

  The chat room opened a private window. His heart thudded as he typed his message into the system.

  We have his trust, Kaz. Let’s take down the Supremacy.

  His hands shook as he debated whether to send it. But when the drone made to return to him, he hit send.

  Teck switched over to the images of the lower levels again and typed in a new report on suspicious activity on Two, to tie in to his use of the holographic keyboard.

  When the drone moved off again, Teck sat back and released a soft breath.

  If this chat room was being monitored, he would be hauled before Voss.

  If not, he had found a way to speak to not only Kaz but Spark, too.

  2

  KAZ

  A lavish, yet sterile house had become her new temporary home. But Kaz had chosen this.

  Chosen to surrender herself to Voss.

  A small price to pay given that her former Level-1 neighbors lived in squalor.

  Thousands of people trapped in a windowless, tepid-air prison in the deepest level of Orion.

  She would not forget them.

  Kaz walked around the narrow property set on two floors that had been part of the old Freedom city—well, one part of it anyway.

  The eco warriors’ actions had likely driven the residents out of this area long before Orion had been built. Or, perhaps, Voss and his Supremacy overlords had kicked them out.

  She grazed her fingers over the deep-red sofa fabric. A little worn in places. Someone had sat on these very items, with kids possibly, or entertaining friends. Game night.

  Except the only games happening now were one-sided.

  The tall bay windows gave Kaz a perfect view over the opulent Level 5. Nothing remarkable to look at. In fact, similar to the city of old except for a few building additions.

  A damn palace compared to her old shipping crate home.

  She touched the frame of the windows, made of wood once but now reinforced steel. The window panes were triple glazed. She reasoned it would take a hammer to break through all three layers.

  Trust and freedom had been promised to those rich enough to afford it, but in the end, it seemed everybody was a prisoner in the Supremacy’s new vision.

  With a sigh, she sat on the blood-red sofa, still wearing the ripped, dusty outfit from her capture, not caring how a simple move created a stain on the furniture. Voss really should have allowed her to shower first before dispatching her to this opulence, but he seemed too much in a hurry. What his end game was she didn’t know yet.

  But one thing had been agreed.

  Kaz had promised to get her father’s journals for Voss. In exchange, Scourge medication for all residents in Orion.

  Not the cure—medication.

  She couldn’t confirm if Voss had the cure on hand, or what stocks were available, but the medication she knew existed on this level. She’d given it to her mother. Her supplier Sam had sourced it from here.

  Not that the medication had stopped the Scourge in the end, but something was better than utter despair.

  Her skin hummed with the feeling of being watched. A silent invasion of her personal space. A not-so-subtle reminder that she was useful until further notice. Until Voss changed his mind again.

  Cameras remained unseen. Who watched? What areas did they cover?

  A set of double doors had been pinned back, separating the living room from the dining space. A tray of untouched food sat on the table.

  At the sight of it her stomach rumbled.

  She knew she had to eat, but what would she be eating?

  Not poison. Voss still needed her for now.

  Kaz examined the comms device on her wrist. Standard issue in Orion. Not illegal to have, but it needed a signal to work. In some places, it didn’t work at all.

  She tried it, but the device flashed red. No messages out. Not unexpected.

  Incoming messages were a different story. Teck had found a way. Sent her a message soon after her meeting with Voss had ended.

  We have his trust, Kaz. Let’s take down the Supremacy.

  It had vanished soon after it had appeared.

  The Supremacy. Ezra had told her about the super group commanding all the Orions. That Voss was just a cog in a giant machine.

  Knowing that made Voss seem less powerful, less intimidating. But she had no qualms that the chancellor would kill her if she failed to ‘locate’ her father’s set of journals.

  She had told him she didn’t know where they were. But she did.

  The one she’d found in the air-con unit and the other on her mother’s person were now with Ezra and the Unworthy. But she had promised the rebel leader medical data in exchange for their safe return. How to do that she didn’t know yet.

  But she was far from out of options. Thousands of people were relying in her.

  Defiance surged within her, quieting the hunger pangs.

  She hadn’t risked her life to sit in luxury for a week, to have Voss pull all the strings while she did.

  Her mind sharpened.

  If I can’t see the cameras, I’ll have to find them the old-fashioned way.

  The silence in the townhouse weighed heavily, making her feel more like a specimen than a guest under surveillance. A chime echoed from the wall, and the cold voice of Chancellor Voss filled the room.

  ‘I hope your new accommodation is to your liking, Kaz,’ he said, the sound disembodied and sharp. ‘It is a gift from the Supremacy, a reward for your cooperation.’

  ‘Cooperation?’ Kaz shot back, her voice shaking with a defiance she didn’t fully feel. ‘You’ve made me a prisoner.’

  ‘Semantics,’ Voss replied, a hint of amusement in his tone. ‘You gave yourself to me to save your people. A noble gesture. Your father would have been proud.’

  The mention of her father made her heart pound. ‘Leave him out of this.’

  ‘I can’t. He’s the reason you are here. He believed he could use one technology to solve two problems. The ultimate cure for the Scourge and the freedom for the Centroids. He thought he could outsmart me by hiding his notes. He was wrong. A cure for the many will also be a weapon for the one.’

  His words hung in the air, cold and menacing. He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.

  The message was clear: he knew her father’s secrets, and he intended to use them against her. She berated herself for not examining the journals close enough before giving them to Ezra.

  Another reason why she had sacrificed herself.

  Kaz got up and moved toward the door leading into the hall. This place couldn’t be entirely covered by eyes.

  The door slid into the wall. Beyond it, an empty hallway painted in eggshell. Boring, hospital-like. But it also housed the black, reinforced front door.

  She’d taken one step into the hall and another toward the black door when the same voice echoed from hidden speakers.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  Kaz kept her composure. She turned around, not knowing where the camera watched. But then she saw the blinking red light. Small. Almost invisible.

  It creeped her out that Voss watched at all.

  ‘I fancied a walk.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time for that. But first, you should shower and change, then eat something.’

  Kaz paused in the hall. All decent ideas. She stank from her sweaty adventure on the surface and, despite her defiance, her stomach protested again at her lack of sustenance. But she wasn’t going to do what Voss commanded—not yet.

  She approached the front door made of carbon fiber and tried the handle. It delivered a solid shock to her hand, as if one of the agents had struck her with their pain stick.

  She hissed and yanked her hand. ‘What the….’ She looked at the camera. ‘I can’t explore this level now?’

  Voss spoke, calmly. ‘You’re free to explore, Kaz, but not before you shower and eat. This is not the lowest tier. You’re in opulence now. You must look like you belong.’

 

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